Living Index

Search by image, region navigation tab, or directly from the book using the QR code next to each project.

The Living Index is an online extension of the book to provide in depth materials. Most projects have design documentation and photos of the architects. You can find videos, GIFs, audio clips, unpublished photos, and maps.

Now wander.

[Spain Wraps] The expressive nature of wrapping is an antidote to shape making for its own sake. The formulation of these projects Spanish architecture in particular is so well-versed in solar control. In a place of sun, these buildings navigate light like a mariner crosses the sea.s is in the service to the sun, which by nature starts with site. Solar control is also about coaxing gentle daylight deep into a space. These are the real solar-powered buildings. Design dialog then can commence with an inventive palette of materials, shapes, and expressions, allowing contemporary architectural expression to acclimatize to its place. Perhaps this is w

[Australia Unfolds] The mix of complex culture and unique land is fertile for architecture to assertively pursue high performance and reformulate aesthetic values. Unfolding architecture is a fundamental expression of purpose in the form of an articulated gesture, which manifests in multiple formal and conceptual ways. All of these buildings explore an experimentation that pursues both performance and culture with active design intent, environmentally rooted and expressed as a bold playfulness. Being on the edge requires a resolute and at times aggressive effort, which creates fertile ground for experimentation and leadership. Understanding Australia’s architecture is about accepting the union of opposites.

[Japan Condenses] By embracing an extended living space into the public realm, the need for private space is generously reduced. This greater-built environment subsidizes the privately-designed environment, allowing a family to live with less space but enjoy a contemporary lifestyle. Since privacy has not historically been a design priority in Japan, a home’s interior is given great freedom to explore space making. By opening up the small volumes, architects can incorporate ingenious ways to design interiors visually, functionally, and psychologically larger than they would seem capable of.

[Germany Maintains] Rather than incrementally implementing changes to afford efficiency gains, as is typical in the conservative world of construction, the grassroots movement of Passivhaus has approaches the consumption of energy from the opposite side of the spectrum. The Germanic quality of intensely focusing on the core stringent efficiency goals has opened up a spectrum of new building typographies that excel in quality and energy miserliness. Design a building’s shell that steeply reduces energy use to the point that its savings in ongoing operating costs justifies the added expense of the envelope over the life of the project.

[Mexico Embeds] Embedded architecture is not about hiding buildings, but about better integrating them to the human scale. Since you still need to provide light and egress it means the architecture is an insertion, rather than an act of camouflage. The need for public green spaces and infrastructure merge elegantly with underground architecture. Embedded architecture can be a kind of radical form of enhanced land use. By inserting program below, the surface is allowed to facilitate public good.

[Cascadia Harvests] The Pacific Northwest region, roughly from British Columbia to Oregon, is often referred to as Cascadia and has a distinctive socio-environmental ethic that provides the perfect template to explore and express the potential of heavy timber construction on a large scale. The conversation pivots from sustainability to adaptability by re-localizing the materiality of buildings. In 30 years, or perhaps much sooner, a wooden skyscraper will be commonplace. Buildings, then cities, made out of wood become our carbon bank.

[Denmark Plays] The Danish take the proverb “half the fun is getting there” very seriously. The bike infrastructure is thriving not just for convenience but also because people genuinely enjoy taking a bike ride as a part of their daily work and social life. Movement and architecture can go very well together. Salted with a strong sense of environmental and cultural values, you have the backdrop for 8 Tallet (8 House), which at 61,000 square meters is Copenhagen’s largest building.